


Falling, Falling, Falling

by Luna_Myth



Series: About Missing People [3]
Category: Sword Art Online
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Artificial Intelligence, Awkward Conversations, Coma, F/M, I Don't Even Know, Kissing, Love, Morality, POV First Person, POV Third Person Limited, Pregnancy, Romance, Unconsciousness, Waiting, Your Move Reki Kawahara, falling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 08:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14328318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luna_Myth/pseuds/Luna_Myth
Summary: Kirito is falling from a tower. Asuna walks out on an argument. {Continues from Know What You Want and Alicization: Rising}





	Falling, Falling, Falling

**Author's Note:**

> this is real late and it's probably gonna get jossed immediately but i do what i want.

                Wind rushed past my ears in an endless gust of noise and I was falling, falling, falling. For a moment I couldn’t see the ground and had the strangest worry that I was falling into the void below Aincrad, the bottomless nothingness that had ultimately claimed the lives of dozens of desperate SAO players. Mere feet away from me, Alice fell too.

                I was curious about what was going to happen to me when I died, of course—my real body was presumably safe in the virtual world, but was I going to respawn in here, or be stuck in some kind of eternal loading screen while I waited for someone on the other side to release me? I truly hoped it was the former, because with my consciousness being sped up like it was, many weeks could pass before I was freed. Or perhaps I would wake up in the real world after all, and everything I had gone through here was a pointless waste of time.

                Except it wasn’t. Maybe it wasn’t the life I was trying to live, the one I had chosen for myself back in the real world with Asuna and Suguha and my friends, but I had made friends here, too, and enemies, and had battles and victories. I’d managed to live another life, although it felt like my third or fourth one at this point, and I’d discovered things about this world that could not have been gained any other way.

                Including the fact that I needed to save it. The people of this world had just as much right to live their lives as anyone, and unless I found a way to put off the stress-test, Cardinal was going to wipe this world clean as the only way to spare it.

                The ground was visible and growing closer and I felt a pang of sadness and anger for Alice. Unlike me, she had no other options upon death. Her artificial fluctlight would be deleted from her light-cube and she would cease to exist. I felt the anger boiling in my chest, despite the fact that she had been trying to kill me and Eugeo. Alice as she was supposed to be, Alice Zuberg of Rulid village, didn’t deserve this. She deserved to have grown up in her hometown with Eugeo, not have her mind messed with by some ascended and twisted admin. If I respawned, I was going to have to make Administrator pay for this if nothing else.

                We were falling toward a river. It shouldn’t matter—from this high up, the fall was still going to kill us like we were hitting cement, not water. I closed my eyes as the river hurtled toward us and silently prayed that the future of this world wasn’t going to die with me. Eugeo was still up in the tower. Maybe he could pull something off.

                A feeling graced my dying lips as I hit the water with the force of a meteor. A soft and gentle sensation, a caress almost like my spirit was leaving my body through my mouth and tickling me on the way out. It was so light and pleasant and familiar that it almost distracted me from the immense pain of my bones shattering on the river, surely my organs beginning to collapse inside me, my body breaking under the weight my actions had forced on it. The last thing I felt before I lost consciousness, I’m now sure, was a kiss.

                **XXX**

                Asuna straightened her shirt nervously as she headed back to the control room where Rinko and Higa and the other important personnel of Project Alicization were working. She wanted to watch some of the monitors and ask more questions about the project while she was waiting for Kazuto to wake up—and equally important, she wanted to distract herself from her nervousness over what she was going to tell him when he did.

                The moment she’d left the medical bay she’d been hit with two conflicting emotions—the urge to tell Kazuto, right now, immediately, and her nerves over the situation in general. She had to tell Kazuto. She wanted to tell him. But as seemed unfortunately often the case with them, he was out of reach, in another world. And telling anyone before him seemed wrong, but she couldn’t very well contain a secret like this on her own. She wanted reassurance, and counsel, and the sense of understanding and acceptance that only a successful conversation could bring, but the person she wanted to talk to most was in a coma.

                So instead she’d decided to do more research into Project Alicization, which was something she’d wanted to do anyway before she’d gotten wildly off course with this whole ordeal. The process of creating true artificial intelligence was thought-provoking to begin with, but there was also the matter of the purpose behind it that Asuna had to contend with. To play with life and death like they were going to, even artificial life, was wrong, and even if there was nothing else she could do, Asuna had to bear witness.

                She found Rinko in the control room helping Higa with Ichiemom again. When Rinko saw her, she came over and said, “Hey, Asuna. Feeling better now?”

                Asuna blushed. “Y-yeah.” In truth, she was no longer nauseous, so in that regard she did feel better, but she was also stunned from the surprise and even more worried about Kazuto now, so it was hard to be sure. At any rate, she felt a lot less fragile than she had earlier, and ready to focus her attention on something else.

                “That’s good,” said Rinko. “Did you come to observe the project more?”

                “Yes.” Asuna nodded. “It’s very curious what you guys are doing here. I’ve met a lot of AIs, but you guys are trying something that’s never been done before.” _Even if it’s for such a militant purpose_ , she added to herself. There was no way Kazuto would approve of what they’d been using him for. She was going to have to tell him when he woke up…

                Asuna blinked and tried to focus again. Rinko was saying, “Speaking of your experience with AIs, it might be interesting to hear your thoughts on this. Do you have any idea why the citizens of the Underworld can’t break certain rules? Has anything like this happened with normal AIs?”

                “Um…” Asuna thought about it. She couldn’t think of any examples, but she remembered something. “An American author and scientist, Isaac Asimov, wrote a lot of stories about robots who had to obey a set of universal commands. They were forbidden from hurting people, but they were also forbidden from anything that could harm their own existence, and this led to the occasional conflict in their system. That’s the only thing I can think of—that they’ve been programmed somehow to obey a certain set of rules. I’m sorry that’s not very helpful. I can’t think of anything like this happening with other AIs.”

                “It’s okay, Asuna.” Rinko returned to a monitor and started scrolling through something. “No one here has anything either and they’ve been working on this for weeks.”

                “We have something,” Higa protested. “We’ve been trying to figure out if there’s a flaw in the light-cube design…but so far, we haven’t found anything.” He shrugged weakly and kept skimming his own monitor. Lines of code flew past.

                “Maybe Kazuto will find something from the inside,” Asuna said, unable to help herself. “He has a habit of trying to do things like that. He’d call it trying to find the true nature of the world. He doesn’t take mysteries lying down.” 

                “Well, yes, it’s possible,” said Higa, spinning around his office chair to look at her. She felt the self-conscious desire to adjust her clothing again. “But if he does find something, he won’t be able to re—“

                “What Higa is trying to say,” Rinko interrupted, “is that we shouldn’t have to rely on just Kazuto.” She gave Higa a look.

                Asuna raised an eyebrow. Rinko had cut Higa off in the middle of a word and now it seemed like she was trying to keep something from her. Suddenly, Asuna remembered.

                “He won’t be able to remember,” she said. “You’re keeping the memories from him of what happens inside the STL.”

                Asuna felt herself growing angry, perhaps slightly more angry than was justified, and she drew back her shoulders, stiffening like an annoyed cat. She remembered that Kazuto had said he couldn’t remember his first experience in the Underworld from their conversation back at Dicey Café, which felt like several lifetimes ago now. But she’d forgotten about it until this moment and it seemed Rinko had been hoping she wouldn’t remember.

                “Not only are you taking years off his fluctlight without his knowledge, but you’re not even going to let him remember what he’s doing in there,” Asuna nearly seethed, barely containing outrage. There was no way this was all directed at Rath’s decision to block Kazuto’s memories. She had to be angry about something else too. Maybe the fact that Kazuto had been hurt on her watch. Maybe the fact that he had been hurt at all. Maybe the fact that they were still tangled up in the SAO incident years later, unable to break free. She didn’t regret those days, as frightening as they’d been, and the memories would always be a part of her, but she wanted to move forward away from the danger, now more than ever.

                Maybe it was that—the fact that she was pregnant and her boyfriend was in a coma, in another world, probably finding more people to save if she knew him, and Asuna knew him quite well. So she couldn’t tell him, couldn’t touch him, couldn’t kiss him—

                She was burning with restrained emotion and it was ridiculous. She felt ready to explode for no good reason. Asuna took a deep breath and let it out to steady herself. It worked a little bit. She felt more in control. This had to be some pregnancy thing and she could get a handle on it.

                “He agreed to it the first time!” Higa defended. “And it’s saving his life. We’re sorry about the memories—maybe word will come down that we can change that, but even if not, what would he do with them? He’s creating _years_ of memories in there that he’ll have no use for out here. Things would be simpler without them.”

                “Yes, but I’m sure he would still want them,” Asuna argued, breathing fast. Higa had raised some good points, but conflict of purpose was not what she needed right now. What she needed was to calm down and for Kazuto to wake up. Getting into an argument with the staff of the company that was currently repairing Kazuto’s neural net was not helpful. Nor would be having a breakdown in this control room.

                Asuna spun on her heel. “I’m sorry; I know I just got here and I wasn’t very helpful, but I have to go. Thanks for letting me look around and all you’ve done for me. I’ll be back later.”

                She rushed out of the room, heading for some place in particular. She wound up in the room Kazuto was being kept in, blessedly empty apart from him. Glass spread between Asuna and her lover, a painful and literal reminder of their separation. He was going to be fine, she was convinced, but the glass drove her mad at that moment and she angrily scanned the room for a door against her better judgement.

                There was one. Asuna’s nerves tingled and she glanced around again furtively. There might’ve been cameras she couldn’t see, but she wasn’t planning on doing anything wrong beyond the glass. She just wanted to hold his hand, as she had done in the past, and he had done for her.

                Asuna slipped through the door, which was surprisingly unlocked. She supposed that if he needed immediate medical attention, they wouldn’t have wanted the door left locked. She crept over to him, lying still on his back, the top half of his face covered by machinery. The STL had him in such a deep dive that there was no trace of an expression on his face, but Asuna hoped he was comfortable. She delicately took his hand. It was cool. Nonetheless, she smiled at how familiar and reassuring it was. She hoped he could feel it, but she doubted it—the Soul Translator was even more powerful than the Nervegear, which had managed to block out all sense of the outside world for over two years.

                “You better wake up soon, Kirito,” she told him, smiling. “I have something to tell you.”

                He didn’t respond, of course, but she felt better just standing near him, although after a while her feet and ankles started to hurt. Hesitantly, then with growing conviction, she leaned over him and kissed him, soft and sweet, a mere press of the lips. His own lips didn’t respond, but just as she was pulling away, she felt him inhale sharply, a note of surprise. A beep sounded as his heartrate spiked. Asuna froze, watching him.

                His heartbeat returned to normal and Asuna sighed, almost laughing at herself for being so silly as to think he might wake up then. At least his body seemed to have responded, even if his mind was still far away. She watched him for a moment longer before leaving back the way she came, her hand fingering the edge of her shirt nervously.


End file.
